‘Now we can breathe,’ say Syrians in Damascuspublished at 06:47 Greenwich Mean Time
Sally Nabil
Reporting from Damascus
Image source, BBC/Sally NabilAs signs of life came back to the Syrian capital Damascus,
many locals still struggle to get over “the era of fear” of former President
Bashar al-Assad.
In downtown Damascus, many shops, restaurants are now open,
but petrol stations, which are all state owned, are still not working.
We can
feel the euphoria, all around us in the heart of the city.
Some families were
handing out sweets in celebration of a new chapter that has just started.
“Now we
can talk out loud, without fear,” a young man tells me with a big smile.
“It’s
as if we can breathe much easier now,” another lady says.
But the heavy legacy
of Bashar al-Assad will continue to have its toll on many Syrians. Desperate
families came from different provinces to Damascus to look for their loved
ones, who disappeared over the last decade.
“My nephew was taken away by the
authorities in a car in 2013, since then we haven’t heard of him,” a
middle-aged man tells me.
It’s his first time to visit the capital in over 10 years. He came all the way from Idlib, a rebel stronghold in northern Syria, to
check prisons and hospitals but he couldn’t find a clue.
Image source, BBC/Sally Nabil